NowThis Nerd
S4 E7

The History of Spider-Man Games Part 3: 2002-2008

By NowThis

Published on 8/3/2018 at 12:00 PM

Out of all the “Spider-Man” games throughout history, it’s surprising that a movie tie-in stands head and shoulders above the rest. Based on the Sam Raimi Spiderman trilogy, the “Spider-Man 2” game is widely regarded as the greatest “Spider-Man” videogame of them all. But the awesome, web-slinging game doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and each game before it contributed a little bit to the magic that makes it possibly the greatest videogame in the series — at least until the “Spider-Man” PS4 game is released by Insomniac.

From the debut of Tobey Maguire in the 2002 “Spider-Man” movie, the Spidey movie games came at a time when superheroes were on the verge of exploding into popular culture, from movies to gaming. But we didn’t just get movie games in this period. Marvel also released an “Ultimate Spider-Man” game, based on the comic and actually intended to be canonical with the “Ultimate Spider-Man” book. “Ultimate Spider-Man” was intended to teach us how Venom gained control of the symbiote suit, but the game ultimately didn’t fit within the complicated comic canon. Still, it was an interesting experiment, and paved the way for more spectacular “Spider-Man” games to come.

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